


Time Stood Still

by MedicatedOwl



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, mostly just angst though, the dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:52:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedicatedOwl/pseuds/MedicatedOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will has always spent his birthdays by himself. But one year things take a different turn. (Set around "Buffet Froid")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Stood Still

He'd convinced himself a long time ago that disappointment required expectation. And yet he can't shake the feeling that he is somewhat disappointed at the moment. But maybe that isn't the right word he's looking for. "Sad" isn't one either, but a part of it plays in whatever he is feeling right now.

Will is driving back home after his session with Dr. Lecter, feeling deflated. In only one day he had managed to mess up a reconstruction by contaminating the scene, and had his own psychiatrist reveal that yes, something really was wrong with his head. And now he is driving in a snow covered road and straining to see through the dark and falling snowflakes. 

Will tries not to think that today is his birthday. He tries to think of this day as nothing special, because that's what it is. 

Ever since adulthood, he's made attempts to keep the date of his birthday hidden. People didn't tend to ask all that often, but when they did, he'd wave it off by changing the subject, happy to know that his birthday would always remain as a time to spend by himself. Will never liked the stress and anxiety that came with the big spotlight being shined on him. Birthdays were supposed to be about having a day to yourself to decompress, not dealing with attention and uncertainty, and the overall sense of cluelessness tied to being in front of an unpredictable group of people.

This was good. Spending one more birthday, of many, by himself. Just him and the dogs. 

And yet. 

Will hates that there is still that speck of sadness floating somewhere in his subconscious. He hates it because he had let himself believe that, at least today, things could go all right. He'd let himself be positive for once. But, evidently, Lady Luck just wasn't on his side. Jack was still annoyed with his mishap at the scene today, and now Will was forced to deal with possibility that something wrong was going on with his head. 

As if following the same pattern, the drive home fails to be an uneventful one. He's forced to stop at least half a dozen times on the road either because the snow had somehow jammed the tires or because of traffic. The drive feels like a never-ending endurance made all the more upsetting by the ubiquitous screaming drivers that were becoming just as annoyed as him. By the time he gets home, Will feels like a sleepwalker, just barely awake and focused. He's usually good at keeping a level-head and staying apathetic, but this time he can't hide the exhaustion and frustration from himself. 

Because all he had wanted was one good day. 

He pushes through the snow that has pilled up on his porch, and then opens the door. He's greeted by a few wagging tails as he shrugs off his coat and boots. But most of the dogs sit by the space heater, happily dozed off, only raising an ear or two in recognition of Will's arrival. For a moment he wonders why they're all so uncharacteristically sleepy. And as soon as he catches a glimpse of the kitchen, he knows why. 

One of the kitchen cupboards is wide open, revealing a big bag of dog food. It had been chewed open, and now the few treats left behind are scattered on the floor, most of them already half-eaten. After a sigh, Will crouches by the cupboard with a broom and dustpan, cleaning up. Odd enough, he can't bring himself to be mad at that moment. The universe could throw almost anything at him, but making Will upset with his dogs would be close to impossible. 

While Will is busy sweeping the treats, Winston wobbles over, his belly obviously full. The dog takes a seat on the tiled floor as if he wants to inspect his handiwork. 

Will leans over to pat his head. "Looks like you boys were busy today, huh?" 

Winston's reply is one big yawn, as if showing just how exhausted the day's events had left him.

"Very busy" Will says to himself with a sigh, noticing that there's vomit under his table. "Don't suppose you've learned a lesson from all this?"

Winston simply moves on his side, trying to scratch an itch on his hind leg. But after a couple of failed attempts to get around his full belly, the dog decides to call it quits and wobbles back into the living room. Will stays behind to clean up the rest of the mess.

A few minutes later, he walks back into the living room and falls onto the sofa, hoping to at least have the rest of the evening go by peacefully. He listens to the sound of the space heater and the dogs settling onto the floor for the night. The sounds of home. 

But the serenity is short lived because Will hears a knock on the door. He closes his eyes and sighs because of course something like this would happen. He knows that the snow storm means it has to be yet another hitchhiker who ended up lost.

As soon as he opens the door, he freezes, because he's not sure if what he's seeing is right. Not sure if he's awake or not. Alana is standing on his porch, snow falling in her hair, and a tentative smile on her features. She's holding what looks to be a pizza box and a case of something. 

"Hi" she says, "happy birthday." 

There's a dozen questions buzzing in Will's mind, but the one that finds itself out is, "How did you know?"

"Jack was organizing some files a few months back, and when I saw yours I couldn't resist taking a peek."

Will worries about what else she might've seen in his file. Among other things, he's failed a lot of FBI tests and had been deemed unfit to be an agent. Jack was always meticulous with his files, which meant that Alana had basically caught a glimpse of everything there was to know about him.

"So I don't know about you" she says, breaking his train of thought, "but I'm not exactly a big fan of soggy pizza."

He frowns for a moment until he realizes that the pizza box in her arms is getting covered in snow.

"The cold kept the beer in a great state, though" she adds with a knowing look.

For a second he's tempted to just close his eyes and try to will her away, because he doesn't want to deal with the anxiety of her presence. Doesn't want to remember how embarrassingly impulsive he had been the last time Alana was in his home. But he can't bring himself to be that rude, so he smiles a bit and then steps aside to let her in. 

As soon as she passes the threshold, Will is forced to take the load from her arms because the dogs all perk up and swarm around her. Alana is a bit taken aback by how frenetic they're getting.

"All right, what's going on?" she asks, struggling to divide her attention among all of them, "do you give them the dog version of catnip or something?"

Will places the boxes on the sofa. "They tore through an entire bag of dog food while I was gone today."

"Oh, well that explains why they're on cloud nine right now."

"That, and you brought pizza over. All bets are off now."

She lets out a laugh. "I thought you said they ate an entire bag of dog food."

"Well, the first rule about dog owning is that you can never underestimate their cravings."

She shakes her head at that, still smiling. For a few seconds, Will watches her being practically drowned by the jumping dogs. He suddenly feels terribly envious of how easy it is for them to socialize with people. Here he was shying away and over-analyzing, and his own dogs are doing such a good job at interacting with someone who wasn't even of the same species as them. 

When they finally calm down a bit, Alana moves over to the sofa and grabs the pizza box, still surrounded by the flurry of excited barks. 

"You think you can hide this so your James Bond-skilled dogs won't get to it?"

Will smiles a fraction before nodding, and he grabs the box to take to the pantry. When he returns he finds her on the sofa with a beer bottle and two of the dogs stretched across her lap. For a moment he's struck by how domestic the sight is, as if he's looking at a picture from another possible dimension. He shakes the thought away before taking a seat on the other side of the sofa.

"It's really cute how easy they can power down" Alana says, using her free hand to rub Winston's belly. "I'd be tempted to get a dog for myself, if I wasn't always so busy."

Guilt suddenly hits him. "You really didn't have to drive all this way" Will says in a soft voice. "I mean I appreciate it, but I know how much of a headache it is to go through the snow storm." 

"Don't worry, I love driving in the snow. The landscape calms me down." She pauses, as if to gather her thoughts. "I know you like keeping your birthday a secret, but I figure that ignoring it this year wouldn't be okay. I mean turning thirty-nine is a big deal."

He shakes his head, almost amused by the thought. "It's really not."

Alana stops to look at him, like an idea suddenly entered her mind. "Why do I have the feeling that you've never had really had a proper birthday celebration before?"

He shrugs a bit. "Birthdays were never a big deal in the family."

"Why not?"

"We didn't have a lot of money growing up, so these kind of days weren't too important. But neither me or my father was bothered, so it was all right." But Alana keeps looking at him with a peculiar expression. Sadness mixed with something else. "It's fine" he reassures her. "Really. I'm used to it and I don't mind."

"But everyone deserves to have a fuss made over them on their birthday."

"Alana, you really don't--"

"Nope" she says curtly, and reaches over to hand him a bottle of beer, "everything you say will be disregarded until that is at least half empty."

He looks at the bottle for a moment. All he wanted was a day with nothing unexpected happening, and now here he is trying to handle being in the presence of someone that makes him feel nervous and guilty and uncertain. 

But she had to have driven three hours in the snow and dark. For him. He tries to sneak a look in her direction and notices her expression is warm and loving as she keeps petting the dog, and Will finds himself tempted to reach out and brush off the remaining snowflakes that are still in her hair. 

But he suppresses that thought and goes back to the bottle in his hand. He's never been a drinker, mostly because alcohol is one of the reasons that cause instability. And yet.

Maybe he could try it her way for once.

"Well now it's starting to feel a little bit like a birthday, doesn't it?" she asks, looking at him tentatively taking a sip.

He had to admit it wasn't bad. "Did you tell anyone else about today?"

Alana shakes her head. "I didn't think you'd appreciate suddenly getting assaulted by birthday calls."

He mumbles a thank you.

"Though, just as a side note, you can never really consider it a birthday until you get a call from half drunk aunt Christa who thinks that the only way phones work is if you scream through them."

Will finds a smile fighting to come out. "That really happened to you?"

"It's usually followed by my vegan cousin Jeff who advises me to try a vegetable loaf instead of birthday cake."

"Sounds like holidays are a pretty busy time for you."

Alana nods, pensive. She then looks around the house and takes in the peace and quiet. "Maybe it's not such a bad idea laying low on your birthday, after all. It's certainly a big change to what I'm used to in my family."

"What do you mean?"

"With three brothers involved, you can bet no one ever has quiet birthdays. It's almost a tradition that we plan the biggest party we can afford. I think it stems from when we were all kids and fighting a lot. Once one of our birthdays rolled around, my mother was just fed up with us arguing all the time, so she forced us all to work together and plan a party with all of our relatives. She said this was like loudly declaring our brotherly love to one another, and there was nothing we could do about it."

"Smart woman."

"Yeah..." Alana says, fixing her eyesight into the distance "yeah, she was."

Will picks up the sad note in her voice and knows that he shouldn't pry, even if he's curious. It was strange how, despite having worked together on and off for several years, the two of them never really knew much about each other. They tended to tip-toe around, avoiding to connect their lives in any way other than when it was truly necessary. 

But what is even stranger is the fact that, after the pause in their conversation, the stillness that follows isn't uncomfortable. They sit in companionable silence, listening to the snores of his dogs and the whirr of the space heater. Will is struck by how different this is from all those times when he's chatting to anyone else, and he's forced to make pointless small talk. 

But now he doesn't have to try, and he's not pressured. Time almost stood still as they sat on the sofa and just enjoyed the silence. And for the first time in what seems like forever, Will feels the need to say what's on his mind.

"I messed up a reconstruction today" he says, catching himself by surprise.

Alana frowns for a second. "Well it's not an exact science."

"No, I mean I literally messed it up. I... I slipped in a pool of blood. Ended up contaminating the scene pretty bad" he says, his voice meek "I'm sure Jack's still upset about it..."

She looks at him a bit surprised, but quickly switches to reassurance. "Will, you're allowed to make mistakes."

"Then why is this voice in the back of my head telling me otherwise?"

The corners of her mouth curl upwards a bit. "That's just your inner critic. You can't expect that guy to ever be nice."

"He has a point, though. Mess up in the law enforcement field and things can turn really ugly." Then he adds as an afterthought, "It's been years, but I still vividly remember how it was to be shot."

"I know how you feel."

Will glances at her, frowning. A few seconds pass before Alana's expression changes, as if realizing that she has to explain what she meant. "I was stabbed once."

He takes a moment to flip that statement around in his head before deciding that no, he can't make sense of it. "Maybe I need more beer for this" he says "but right now I don't really find that joke very funny."

Alana moves the dogs off her lap and on the cushion next to her. And for the next few seconds, deep confusion and panic settles over Will because Alana suddenly tugs at the collar of her shirt. But once she reveals her left shoulder, he spots a fading scar.

"I'm really not that good at telling jokes" she says.

The scar doesn't look particularly deep or visible, but it unnerves him all the same because it's there and he can't think of a reason why.

When he's able to find his voice again, he asks, "What happened?"

She just shrugs slightly as she straightens her shirt back "People don't like shrinks."

"I can't imagine someone not liking you."

The sentence just slips out before he's aware of it, and for a moment Will expects a cartoon anvil to fall on his head. But Alana doesn't look the least bit bothered. The smile that appears on her face is truly heartwarming. But it fades away too quickly, and Will can't help wonder if it's because the gears in her head turned to a certain scene that had taken place only a few weeks before. But if it did, then she doesn't seem uncomfortable.

"It happened a few years after I got my license" she says, "I'd become so fascinated with the mindset of criminals that I annoyed my boss for months to let me have a few sessions with a convicted felon. And after a few weeks and a lot of paperwork, I was able to get an all-clear."

"You wanted to get into the head of a criminal?"

She nodded. "I was scheduled to talk to this man who had killed his wife and kids. There was definite proof that he'd done it, but his overall demeanor just didn't match the act he had committed. No one could figure out why. It just fascinated me, and I wanted to know why. So I had a few sessions with him in a room with a guard, and the man turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, but anxious." 

"I was certain that he was holding back from talking to me honestly because the room was being supervised, so before the next session I worked around the system to make sure the only guards would be on the outside of the room." Alana pauses. "I was just so sure that my profile was accurate. That he was too scared to talk around guards. That he wasn't aggressive."

Will glances at her for a moment and waits for her to continue. 

"That day he surprised me by jumping off his seat and rushing towards me with this sharp object. It was mostly all a blur, but I was lucky I managed to avoid getting injured too bad until the guards burst through the door. I found out later that the guy had taken the plastic handle of a toothbrush and spent weeks sharpening it." She smiles a bit. "I still can't believe that I was careless enough to sit alone in a room with a murderer."

Will isn't sure what to say. He's never been particularly good with finding the right words, nor can he simply throw caution to the wind and attempt a reassuring hug. So he says nothing at all.

"The point to this whole story" she says "is that you're not alone. People mess up at their job all the time, and sometimes really bad."

"The difference is that you were inexperienced back then."

"And you think you're old enough to know better by now?"

Will's mouth turns into a thin line for a moment. "I think I should know better than to get lost in a reconstruction without an anchor."

"And why didn't you anchor onto anything today?"

Will thinks back to the crime scene and realizes just how convoluted his reality has become. It's at a point where he's not sure what's real and what's not. And after today's session with Dr. Lecter, he's acutely aware that there's something wrong with him. Will sneaks a peek in Alana's direction, wondering if he should tell her. 

But he doesn't. He doesn't want to ruin a nice, quiet evening by worrying her.

"Jack will get over it, you know" she says. "And if he doesn't then I can talk to him until he sees the error of his ways."

"If there's anyone who can change his mind, then it's you" Will says with a tentative smile. "But I wouldn't want you getting involved in this mess."

She gives him a knowing look. "I don't know if you've heard this, but part of being a psychiatrist like me is having the free pass to meddle in Jack Crawford's cases." 

He wants to laugh at the dissonance between her machiavellian words and her innocent appearance, but he settles for a half smile. And from the corner of his eye he can tell that she's also smiling back.

The evening melts into night, and Will notices that neither of them had touched the case of beer as they chatted. It dawns on him that Alana had probably suspected the only thing he needed on his birthday was someone to have around. The pizza and beer had only been an excuse. 

They continue talking for a bit longer until Will realizes that he has an appointment the next morning with Dr. Lecter's neurologist friend. But he doesn't even have to mention it because Alana can tell the change in his demeanor. 

"You don't have to tell me right now if you don't want to" she says, "but if something's worrying you, then you can always talk to me about it."

The offer is tempting, he can't deny it, but the voice in the back of his head is telling him to keep her out of this. Because he'll able to solve the problem himself, without worrying Alana.

"It's nothing, just a routine appointment I have tomorrow" he reassures her. 

Soon enough it becomes late, and Alana gets off the sofa and moves over to the door. She tells him one more time that if something is bothering him, he can always rely on her, but Will promises that it's nothing, simply nerves. 

They both stop before the door, and for a few seconds, Will feels like the anxiety and awkwardness had re-emerged. He's not sure how to say goodbye. There's a dozen scenarios running through his head right now, but none seem right, and so he finds himself simply standing besides her, unmoving and panicky. 

He's taken completely by surprise when Alana leans in and gives him a hug. 

"I'm sure your appointment tomorrow will go okay" she says against his neck. 

Will just nods stupidly. 

"Take care of yourself, all right?" When she breaks the embrace, she smiles at him one more time. "Goodnight."

And she's gone. 

Will is left standing on the porch, looking as she makes her way through the snow and towards the car. Her small figure soon disappears, engulfed by the night. 

He closes the door and sits himself back on the sofa, feeling dazed. 

All he can think about is the next day, and his appointment with the neurologist. For the first time in what seems like ages, Will feels optimistic. Because now he's dead-set on figuring out what's wrong with his head and getting himself straightened out.


End file.
